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Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

jonathanhaidt.substack.com

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Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#201

Post by Der_Einzige »

ccleve wrote: post #19
atonse wrote: post #2

We have really made it a point to have our kid play freely as much as possible and minimize scheduled activities (piano lessons etc.) the problem is that most of his friends are in a million classes so even if he’s free, they often aren’t. That’s been the big challenge. So then there are these magical days where they all don’t have any activities and those invariably happen to be the days ALL kids look forward to. Cu…

I came here to post exactly this. It is appalling that we live in a neighborhood where everyone can walk, there are plenty of kids that my son knows within a mile, he's 14 and more than old enough to be out on his own, but every one of his friends is in a math class, or French school, or out of town on vacation, constantly. He goes to the park and there is no one there. So he stays home and watches anime. The only wa…

Given that the anime waifu crowd is a huge reason why AI image generation is moving as fast as it does, it's probably better for society that he becomes a weeaboo. It's thankless work but someone has to label all the images on the -booru websites for the good of humanity (unironically).

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#202

Post by red-iron-pine »

seszett wrote: post #143
kajaktum wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever this kind of opinion props up I wonder how far would you let your child to "fail"? Clearly we need our children to stumble and fail in a low-stake environment before they actually experience them later on in life. This naturally involves taking some risk. I remember being able to walk freely around the village pretty much without any supervision, I did get hurt a lot either from running into walls or getting…

> modern society can't seem to tolerate even a single dead children You mean parents can't seem to tolerate even a single dead child. And that's true, especially when most parents only ever have one or two children. Obviously they don't want them to die. To parents, their children aren't an abstract idea or a number that they can rationalize away.

except when someone shoots up their school, it seems

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#203

Post by tinycombinator »

outlace wrote: post #40
MattGaiser wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China do not have the same dramatic rises in mental illness Or does their culture just tend to view higher levels of distress as normal given how competitive it is there? https://fortune.com/2023/07/06/china-gen-z-mental-health-cri... That being said, they are open that there are issues there as well.

Yeah but there’s big a difference between mental health issues in China being driven by intense academic competition and pressure and, as the Haidt article claims, lack of enough unstructured playtime.

Intense academic competition and lack of unstructured playtime would seem to go hand-in-hand, no?

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#204

Post by evandale »

lfowles wrote: post #183
ddq wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why replace it? You're just teaching the child that breaking things has consequences for others but not for them.

I've tried preaching philosophy to my toddler but he just doesn't seem to get it for some reason :) Some toys do get "broken" (but easily fixed so they reappear in a week or more), but out of sight means out of mind! He won't even remember it exists as soon as he gets thirsty and wants his drink instead, so effectively there are already zero consequences outside of a minute of anguish. I, on the other hand, do like t…

I never understand this view, but admittedly I don't have children. I have a cat though. She's the first pet I've ever had in my life.

I got lots of warnings from lots of people. Don't let her out or she'll cry all the time to go out. Keep her away from the door or she'll run out and you won't see her again. It sounded very difficult.

However I didn't follow this advice and let my cat out in my backyard. And I found out that people were right and she does cry to go out all the time.

At the start. So I ignored her. I didn't even tell her to be quiet. I let her whine and cry as much as she wanted. She was 100% fine and had everything she needed except the ability to go outside.

She started to scratch the screen to voice her displeasure. I'm the boss and so she lost screen door privileges. She tried to negotiate but failed horribly because, again, I am the boss. She is a cat. The next weekend she got screen door privileges back and scratched the screen on day 2. She lost them again because I'm the boss and I don't want her to scratch my screen. When she got her screen privileges back again she never scratched the screen again.

The door thing, same. She snuck out once. Then I started locking her in a safe room with everything she needed. It's still her room to this day and she can trash it as much as she wants, just like she could as a kitten. That's the only room she can do that and seems to understand that. She doesn't really come near the door if I'm leaving now, and if she's close she will not try sneaking out.

She just turned two this past month, and while she was a nightmare as a kitten, she is a complete angel now.

I'm not totally perfect and for example I can't keep her off my desk if it's in the sitting position. So I've learned to deal with it. If I don't want her on my desk I need to either keep her out of my office or use it standing. I can't seem to win this battle and I tried everything. I'll say that not buying a kid a new iPad seems like a much easier thing to do.

I'm sure children are a lot different but the "I can't teach children philosophy" excuse sounds pretty weak. I don't understand how children can have that much power over an adult.

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#205

Post by Der_Einzige »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #83
fnimick wrote: post #3

Meanwhile I know people who look at analytics and numbers to decide what sports and activities their child (who is still in elementary school!) should be doing in order to maximize college admissions chances. It's madness. Don't play violin (even if you like it) because there are too many people doing that, you have to do something unique. Don't play basketball, it's too common and therefore too hard to stand out, yo…

> Meanwhile I know people who look at analytics and numbers to decide what sports and activities their child (who is still in elementary school!) should be doing in order to maximize college admissions chances. Those people are dumb; ignore them. They're "fighting the last war", so to say. Seriously, an orchestra needs 30-40 violins per tuba. There has to be a lot of violin players, or there is no orchestra (the Harv…

Most school orchestras are not chamber orchestra, they separate band and the strings into separate classes with separate performances.

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#206

Post by jjk166 »

ddq wrote: post #146
lfowles wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, it's not just that I'm anxious the toy will break. It's that I'm anxious the behavior will continue and the replacement will be broken in short order and so on.

Why replace it? You're just teaching the child that breaking things has consequences for others but not for them.

At some point in time you made the determination that the value of the child possessing that item was greater than the cost to purchase said item. While them breaking the item may have changed the equation, generally it doesn't. In real life if you accidentally break something, you replace it and move on. If the child is old enough perhaps have the replacement come out of their allowance/have them do something in exchange, but if they are too young to take care of the issue themselves, they are too young to be responsible for taking care of the issue.

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#207

Post by watwut »

uoaei wrote: post #119
mrguyorama wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't allow your kids to fuck up, they will never build healthy behaviors around fucking up. It's very helpful for kids to give them safe chances to fuck up.

Witnessed this kind of thing today. Doting father of three boys on vacation. They're all ditzing around on busy sidewalks and the father barks "Control yourselves!" It occurred to me at that moment that this kind of hovering and scolding teaches children to externalize the responsibility of understanding their environment and their place within it . They will literally never learn the lessons this father wants to imp…

The busy sidewalk thing is about innocent passersbys not having to deal with rowdy kids bumping into them or otherwise bothering them. And actually, kids that are told to watch it actually overall do take more care about that sort of stuff then if parents just let them do whatever.

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#208

Post by magicalhippo »

lolinder wrote: post #44
Waterluvian wrote: post #9

This may be obvious or well-discussed but I had an epiphany some years back when my dad, regarding my kids, said (paraphrasing), "they're not playing. 'Play' is a misleading term. They're testing the world. They're learning how things work. How gravity works. How friction holds lego together. How actions cause reactions. How friends and strangers behave when you do things. How to use language with make believe. How t…

I wholeheartedly agree based on my own kids, but want to add a caution lest someone misunderstand: this testing, learning, and growing is of a kind that can only be done without adult supervision. It's not something that you can give them with a private lesson. It's not something that can be taught in a classroom. It's not something that can happen at all without adults letting the kids figure it out on their own by…

I worked for a guy who designed playgrounds for kindergartens, schools and similar.

He stressed the importance of spontaneous, unstructured play. As you note it leads to important social development, it improves creativity and could lead to much better academic performance into the teens according to the studies he showed me.

When he designed a playground it wasn't "here they can do A and there they can do B", but he strived to provide spaces that facilitated spontaneous play. He wanted the kids to do their own thing, and provided as many options as possible. An important factor here is that kids enjoy different kinds of play. Not everyone wants to kick a ball, some want more social play so might need a space that allows for that, perhaps a secluded sitting group.

However as you note safety is a big issue. He had a guiding principle of two kinds of safety. There's subjective saftey, if you're high up you know falling might hurt. This is what kids should learn, and it's important they get to do that without permanent injury.

The second kind is objective safety, which relates to the environment and equipment, which facilitates this learning of subjective safety. There shouldn't be rocks near by equipment which could cause permanent injury if a kid fell of the equipment. There shouldn't be gaps in the swing attachment where a kid could lose a finger, and so on.

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#209

Post by jwells89 »

lolinder wrote: post #44
Waterluvian wrote: post #9

This may be obvious or well-discussed but I had an epiphany some years back when my dad, regarding my kids, said (paraphrasing), "they're not playing. 'Play' is a misleading term. They're testing the world. They're learning how things work. How gravity works. How friction holds lego together. How actions cause reactions. How friends and strangers behave when you do things. How to use language with make believe. How t…

I wholeheartedly agree based on my own kids, but want to add a caution lest someone misunderstand: this testing, learning, and growing is of a kind that can only be done without adult supervision. It's not something that you can give them with a private lesson. It's not something that can be taught in a classroom. It's not something that can happen at all without adults letting the kids figure it out on their own by…

I'm not a parent, but I can imagine how difficult it must be for some parents to be able to "let go" in this way sometimes and let kids be kids.

I think if I had kids my gut feeling would be to prevent harm and unpleasant experiences, because I wouldn't want to experience those things myself, much less those in my charge who may not be equipped to handle it as well. If I allow myself to be driven by that instinct however, they'll never be well equipped which does not make for a well rounded adult. It hurts to see immediate family hurting even in trivial capacities, but a parent must seemingly be able to endure that if the children are to come to be able to stand on their own.

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#210

Post by red-iron-pine »

SoftTalker wrote: post #155
nyanpasu64 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents drove me to burnout, dropping out of college, and becoming an anxious traumatized wreck, by only providing support in response to achievements, and destroying my self-worth whenever I strayed from their chosen path of maximizing academic accomplishments to get into the most prestigious and stressful college possible. I don't plan to have kids, because I'm not doing well enough to provide an environment of…

Kids don't need a college degree to avoid homelessness or starvation. They do need valuable skills, but that could be HVAC, electrician, carpenter, mechanic, any number of things that don't take anything more than some community/vocational college or just working your way up from entry-level to get into. People who are homeless or starving are mainly mentally ill, or simply have no skills to offer any employer and no…

yeah the AI is coming for your highfalutin desk job, but the carpenters will be making decent money for a while yet.

basic woodworking skills are things that they can start picking up in HS shop classes; I spent summers working in a furniture factory framing chairs as a kid.

got a neighbour who does asphalt paving -- just driveways. Dude is booked solid through the Fall and into December, and does alright. Not Palo Alto FAANG money but he's got a nice truck and a fishing boat and a nice garden that we bonded over / share tips about. point is: plenty of options for doing alright; the rest of the world ain't SF or NYC

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